


Xanatos Wept

by Amber_and_Ash



Series: Variants on the Theme of Dead Air [2]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Episode: s08e05 Dead Air, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 22:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1566773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber_and_Ash/pseuds/Amber_and_Ash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crack. While going door to door during the events of Dead Air, Tony gets hurt. Finally! Tim knew his plans would succeed eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Xanatos Wept

**Author's Note:**

> All stories in this series are fully independent of each other

"What happened?"

"Boss! We went after Tony because, you know, we were worried, and Tony wasn't... and I don't know what he was thinking, because, he shouldn't have been in danger, but we went in anyway--"

"Ziva! Report."

Tim shut up, concealing his smirk. Gibbs was a man who had long since started believing his own hype. He really thought he had a supernatural gift and could tell when people were lying to him, which made him ridiculously easy to manipulate. Pretty much everyone close to Gibbs did so regularly. Abby and Ziva played helpless little girl who wanted a Daddy and received ridiculous levels of favouritism out of him, while Ducky played disappointed best friend – the Wilson to his House. Tim couldn't figure out if Ducky’s pay off was purely psychological or whether it extended to monetary compensation, but Tim didn’t care enough to find out. The important thing was that, while Tim noticed the others doing it, none of them noticed when Tim did the same thing. He supposed he went under the radar because he didn't want the same things the other agents did. He didn't want Gibbs's protection or assistance; he wanted to be underestimated. He had succeeded amazingly well at that.

It had taken a little while, but Tim had managed to insert himself into the perfect position within a federal agency. He had a high level of access to confidential information, and a boss that looked the other way if he indulged in a little hacking. It was everything he'd hoped for when he’d first worked out his plan. He'd been worried whether he could balance being good enough to stay, but not good enough to be promoted (or stay promoted, as in that terrible 'mexico-siesta' phase when he'd been forced to act _unprofessional_ as well as unskilled). Serving under Gibbs, however, made it trivially easy. Gibbs might have fired half of the federal agents in DC, but he actually only did so for a handful of reasons, most of them revolving around not showing absolute loyalty to Gibbs himself. On the other side of the coin, Gibbs had never promoted anyone in his entire NCIS career, and was quite happy to assume Tim’s career goals were to do whatever Gibbs wanted him to. That was a godsend. Promotions were to be avoided like the plague for people in his situation. Others – especially others who belonged to various government agencies – paid too much attention to senior agents. He simply couldn’t afford that. Laundering his secondary income through his 'best-selling books' was already risky enough without any added scrutiny.

He’d also been exceptionally fortunate in his other work associates. Ziva automatically assumed everyone who wasn't her (and perhaps Gibbs) was an incompetent idiot, so even the mildest of sucking up had kept her perfectly content with him. Ducky barely noticed him, and it took almost no effort to keep it that way. He'd needed to maintain his puppy-dog crush on Abby far longer than he'd originally intended (and honestly, considering the way she treated him, him continuing to like her _should_ have been suspicious), but it worked. Abby was the kind of girl who despised anyone who was willing to sleep with her, and he was more than willing to sacrifice himself for his cover. Vance 'liked' him, but he was never going to have the guts to confront Gibbs about Tim's placement.

It had only ever been Tony that Tim had had to worry about. Perhaps it was because Tony spent so much time hiding his real self that he knew what he was looking at. Tony was constantly watching and testing. Tim had to be careful. Walking-on-egg-shells careful. He had to fall for enough pranks to be convincingly incompetent but not for so many pranks that it was obvious he was doing it on purpose. He had to disbelieve enough of Tony's tales of prowess to be consistent with his experience as an investigator, but not so many as to show any skill as a profiler. Test after test after test. It was tiring, and irritating, and Tim had long since had enough.

He'd been tempted to drop a word into the ears of his alternate employers, naturally, but had decided against it. If they thought Tim was a potential weak point, they might decide that removing Tim was a safer plan than removing the threat. So he had to do something himself, and that something had to be clever. It could not, it absolutely could not, be something that would trigger Tony's (or Gibbs’) suspicions if it failed. He was looking to make things better, but the primary goal had to be to not make things worse. So far, Tim had thought of nothing that met the bill other than setting Tony up in dangerous situations and waiting for nature to take its course. He had despaired of his plan, but now, finally, _finally_ , it had worked out.

He trailed along to the hospital visits, then the bullpen, then the hospital again. He kept quiet. No one noticed. With so many high-drama people in the room, he suspected no one would have noticed even if he'd started watching porn to pass the time. Still, he was more relieved than not when he was summoned by IA for an interrogation. He’d rather have it over and done with, and it was an unassailable reason to not be in that uncomfortable waiting room.

“Thank you for coming, Agent McGee.”

“Sure, but if we can keep this short? I don't like being away from Tony when he's...” Tim trailed off.

“Of course, Agent. Just a formality, really. We just need your report about the events. If you could start from the very beginning, right when you started the surveillance.”

Tim almost snorted. Did they really think grade-school level tactics like that would work on a MCRT agent? Still, he supposed he ought to give them points for starting in the right place. He wondered if Ziva had raised any suspicions. He hadn't thought that of her – 'Mossad trained' and all. Still, he'd prepared for exactly this question, and it he might as well start off with it.

“Sure. We set up and tested the sound, and then Agent DiNozzo left to get the voice prints. He started speaking to each resident in turn, without anything suspicious occurring. We monitored by speaker initially, but after a little while we switched to ear buds.”

The investigators really weren’t much good at keeping expressions off their faces. Tim almost thought he could hear their jaws dropping. Gibbs would have had their guts for garters for giving away so much to their suspect.

“Tell us a bit more about that switch.”

Tim tried to sound confused. “Well, Agent David thought the sound of Tony’s voice might be too suspicious to a passer-by, so we switched. Nothing more to say, really.”

“Can you tell us the exact words you used in that conversation?”

“I don't think so, no. I was concentrating on Tony. I wasn’t really paying that much attention to _us_.”

“If you could try, Agent McGee, in would be a great help.”

“If you say so.” Tim sighed, and wrinkled his brow. “Agent David said something about Tony’s voice being loud. I told her Tony was always like that. So she said it would be better if we didn’t use the speaker. I agreed, and we put in our ear buds instead.”

“Did you see Agent David put in her ear bud?”

“Ah… Yes? I mean, I’m sure I would have noticed if she hadn’t.”

A little frantic scribbling and beeping of phones with messages. Tim tried to look spaced out and almost asleep to explain why he wasn't finding all of this suspicious. He almost frowned. Maybe they were being so incompetent as a kind of test? Should he say something after all? No, let it go. He'd mention something to Gibbs, and pass it off as wanting to wait for advice if it turned out to have been a trap after all.

“Thank you, Agent. If you could jump ahead until just before the incident?”

“He arrived at the door, which was opened by a child. We could hear a couple arguing in the background, but I couldn’t make out the exact words. The kid asked him to come quickly because … Amy? Allie?... something like that was hurt. Tony entered the house and reached the room where the argument was happening. Things started getting tense, but Tony sounded like he was handling it. Then I heard a shot, but I couldn't immediately tell if I was hearing it through the headset. I confirmed with Agent David that it was gunfire we’d heard, and drove us to the location that Tony had last given us. Agent David took point as we entered.”

“Just a second, Agent McGee. Going back to just prior to the gunshot, why didn’t you consider going to Agent DiNozzo’s aid earlier?”

“Well, I did consider it, but the last thing I wanted to do was break his cover and put the whole operation into jeopardy for a minor domestic matter. Ziva’s a better judge of that kind of thing than I am, and she didn’t appear concerned about the direction it was going. I guess we both expected Tony to be able to talk the couple down. He’s really good at things like that.”

The interviewer led him through the process of entering the house, finding the dead bodies of the husband and wife, and evacuating Tony and the children to hospital. Tim could tell the man wasn’t really interested in any of that, but it had to be covered for form’s sake. They thanked him for his time, reminded him to keep himself available, and dismissed him. Tim stopped off for lunch and picked up proper coffee and donuts in the hopes of reducing the volume of Gibb’s indignation. It was accepted without thanks.

“There was something hinky about that interview, Boss.”

“Well?” asked Gibbs impatiently when he didn’t continue.

“They were asking the wrong sort of questions, and they were paying way too much attention to it for a routine enquiry. Do you think there’s a question about whether the husband did all the shootings himself? Because I swear, there was nothing to suggest it was anything other than Tony trying to protect those little girls.”

“Wait here and phone me if there’s any change,” ordered Gibbs, storming off to do Gibbs-things to the people in charge.

Tim concealed his grin. Even if the investigators had further concerns about his actions, their tidy little investigation was shortly to descend into total chaos. As a plus, Gibbs could work off some of his anger safely away from Tim’s presence. Now all he needed to make his day complete was news that Tony had sustained injuries too severe to go back into the field, and from the serious looks on the Doctor’s faces, that seemed very likely. Things were finally, finally, looking up for Tim.

 

* * *

 

Tim should have known better than to tempt fate that way. Of _course_ Tony had to beat overwhelming odds not only to survive but to make a full recovery. Of c _ourse_ Ziva had been too stupid to come up with a convincing lie to tell the internal investigation team. Worse than her retirement from the team (leaving a spot open for who knew what kind of trouble maker), she’d managed to get him into trouble as well! Apparently he shouldn’t have been following her lead and should have been monitoring her behaviour. Like he was really supposed to be giving orders to a trained assassin on how to behave in the field. Hell, everyone from the Director to the janitor had been treating her as senior to him since she first joined the team, and _now_ he’d been expected to be in charge?

Okay. Tim told himself to calm down. The situation wasn’t irretrievable. Gibbs hadn’t fired him. Vance would make the reprimands in his file go away in time, and the monitoring of his behaviour was laughably incompetent. Chances were that he could cope with the newcomer just as easily as he had everyone else. Tony was still the only real threat. New plans. Or perhaps old plans? Ziva wasn't around just waiting for a chance to embarrass Tony by rescuing him anymore. Maybe drugging his coffee would be more successful from now on. Yes, that was the ticket. A few more incidents of randomly-incompetent DiNozzo, and even if Tony wasn’t killed, he’d be encouraged to find work elsewhere.

All Tim would need was a little luck, and he was more than due some. Tim nodded. He could manage this. Damn Tony and his damnable resilience, but he’d get him next time. He would.


End file.
